It is currently time-consuming, difficult, and expensive to set up a combined audio and visual presentation conference between remotely located conference sites. One known approach is videoconferencing, which involves two or more videoconference devices of the type sold by PictureTel Corporation of Andover, Mass., USA. Such devices are expensive and optimized to support full-motion person-to-person video. They use expensive ISDN lines for communication, which adds to the total solution cost and hinders mobility of the system. Videoconference devices also typically have dedicated telephone numbers that may be unlisted or difficult to determine, thereby complicating videoconference setup. In many instances, full-motion video is unnecessary for an effective conference. Often a simple telephone conference and shared presentation images are all that is required.
A common practice among presenters is to display computer-generated visual aids or images. Videoconferencing systems typically do not provide convenient tabletop connectivity for integrating presentation images with the video transmission. Rather, it may be necessary to adjust the videoconferencing system so that its video camera is aimed toward a screen where presentation images are displayed, e.g., via a computer display or multimedia projector.
It is also known to use both a telephone and a computer for sharing presentation materials between a local site and a remote site over a computer network concurrently with an audio telephone conference. In known methods, separate connections are established manually for the voice call (via the telephone network) and for the data or images (via the computer network). The telephone number of the remote site is first dialed on a speakerphone at the local site to establish the audio connection. Then, to establish the shared presentation connection, the user at the local site must locate the Internet Protocol address (“IP address”) of the remote computer and establish a data network connection. While ordinary telephone numbers are typically easily located or communicated to a remote party, IP addresses are often unknown, can change frequently, and are difficult to obtain. IP addresses may also be dynamically allocated to computers within a network domain or corporate subnet via Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (“DHCP”) and may be valid only within the domain or corporate subnet and not directly addressable from outside of it, due to the use of proxy servers or network address translation (NAT) service. Data network connections for shared presentations are typically blocked by firewalls when sending data or images over the Internet, unless the firewall has been specially configured. Thus there exists a need for improved methods and devices for establishing dataconferencing sessions.
Other dataconferencing systems use a centralized computer server to set up and manage the audio and data connections. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,916,302 of Dunn et al. describes using a Public Switched Telephone Network (“PSTN”) for the audio component of a dataconference and a centralized server computer accessible via a computer network for distributing the video or image component of the dataconference. Participants using the Dunn et al. system access the server computer to download images using Web browser software of a personal computer. The network address or Internet domain name of the server computer must be communicated to all participants and manually input into the Web browser by each participant to upload or access the image component of the dataconference. Manual input of the server's network address is tedious, subject to typographical errors, and difficult to coordinate for multiple conference participants. This method also leaves residual images on the central server computer and the computers of each participant after completion of the dataconference, which may be undesirable.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,605 of Watson describes a low-bandwidth remote conferencing system that uses a PSTN for the audio component and networked computers for the visual component. Before a conference, data representing visual images is distributed to computers of conference participants. During the conference, one participant, a leader, periodically issues selection signals to all computers, causing them all to select one of the distributed images and display it. The selection signals and the telephone conference are carried by a single voice-grade telephone channel. The system requires distribution of the presentation images in advance of the telephone conference and does not address the desire to avoid manual interaction with the computer at each site to initiate downloading of the image data. Furthermore, there are some types of presentations for which images cannot be prepared in advance of the presentation and that involve interactive use and display of a software application such as a spreadsheet or drawing program. For example, budget planning and review sessions, design conferences, and distance learning could all benefit from the ability to interact with a software program at one or more of the sites, and have the software program display its output all of the participating sites nearly simultaneously. As with the Dunn et al. method, the system of Watson may undesirably leave residual image data on participant computers. Thus a need exists for a dataconferencing system that allows on-demand distribution of presentation content and control of remote presentation displays on-the-fly, without the use of an expensive centralized data storage server and without user interaction at each remote conference site.
While many conference facilities include a network connection point, such as a wall jack for an Ethernet, most facilities do not keep a computer connected to the network. Consequently, a significant amount of time is required to configure the network connection for the computer that will be used at each of the conference sites. The time and difficulty of connecting to the network may be compounded by the use of laptop or other mobile computers that are configured for use with other networks or at other locations within the same network, and not configured for use at the conference site. None of the systems described above overcome the difficulties associated with configuring a computer for connection to a computer network at each of the conference sites in advance of each dataconference session. A need exists for a simplified method of connecting a computer or other display device to a data network, for use in dataconferencing.
A need also exists for dataconferencing apparatus that includes a projector connection, a computer network connection, a voice network connection, and a dataconferencing control mechanism in a single convenient tabletop unit.